Lekki Toll: Blank Ammunition Was Used – Former Director Usman

Speaking with ARISE News on Thursday, 29th October 2020, former Director, Public Relations of the Nigerian Army, Brigadier General Sani Usman (rtd), declared that the ammunition used during the shooting of unarmed #EndSARS protesters at the Lekki toll gates on Tuesday, 20th of October, was blank and intended to diperse protesters.

He noted that ‘blank ammo has little or no effect on its target’.

He also said that the military should be commended for their use of blank armour meant for training instead of live ammunition, adding that the use of live ammunition would have brought about ‘serious collateral damage’.

“If you look at the canisters, they were blank ammo and blank ammo don’t even kill. At a close range, l – maybe 100-metres – maybe it will have some pigmentation on your skin.

Remember the military are armed and by the nature of their training, they are trained to kill and I think the military in its wisdom instead of using live ammunition decided to use blank armour which is meant for training.

I think they should be commended for that otherwise there would have been serious collateral damage, but they were professional enough to have done that.” Usman said.

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Global rights group, Amnesty Insternational, had on wednesday, 28th October, declared that its crisis response experts investigated and verified social media videos and photographs that confirmed that security forces were indeed present at the scene when the shootings occurred.

Countering claims of the Global rights group who released a timeline of the shooting of #EndSARS protesters at the toll plaza, Usman stated that the group had a lengthy history of falsely accusing the Nigerian military.

He said, “There was a time when I was the director army public relations, Amnesty International accused the Nigerian military of killing over 5000 people in Maiduguri, the Borno state capital.